


all of the ways

by ndnickerson



Series: so innocent of men [2]
Category: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Sex, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:27:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane and Edward's real wedding night. Set after memory serves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all of the ways

Edward Fairfax Rochester, despite all his attempts, has few illusions about his life, and even fewer now. He is fully aware that he should be grateful that he survived the fire that claimed his first wife's life, and he is even more cognizant that he should be grateful Jane returned to him, that she agreed to marry him even in his crippled, pitiful state.

Despite all that, he thought that surely blindness and his ruined arm were enough penance for the presumption that he could commit bigamy. Surely his shell of a manor tipped the balance even slightly back in his favor.

Not so, though. Apparently not so. For his new wife is moving through what became, today, _their_ bedchamber, and he cannot see her. The only vision he has of her in bridal raiment is in his own memory, locked in that frustrating darkness, and he can't help but remember the shocked beginnings of dismay on her face after his secret was revealed. Today all he could do was cling tight to her hand and nod and fight down an entirely ridiculous fear that, somehow, he was being fooled again. That terrible day in Jamaica he had not known what was happening, and that blindness, that arrogant pride and shallow lust had cursed him for fifteen years. Now he had only the feel of Jane's cool small hand in his and the low, bemused tone of her voice when she said she would marry him, to reassure him that he wasn't walking right back into another nightmare, even more defenseless this time.

"Jane."

His voice comes out a little harsher than he intended, but he hears that delicate slipper trip a bit closer to the bed. He's attired in what is supposed to be a simple nightdress. The cotton feels common enough under his fingertips but he can't _see_ , doesn't _know_ , and he had made a tenuous peace with his new state before she had come back to seemingly torment him by her presence and his inability to see it. Oh, he would have given almost anything to see her one last time.

But there are other memories for tonight. He has his impatience and his terrible lust to thank for that.

"Edward."

She always sounds, now, as he's in this eternal damned night, like she has been told the most delicious joke, and he can imagine her pale lips (she would not deign to paint her common plain face with cosmetics, not his Jane) curving up a little at the corners.

The bed dips. She is beside him. His heart beats a little faster.

"Put out that candle."

"Does the smell disturb you?"

If someone else said it, it would be fainting, solicitous. Jane's voice is barely interested, as serious as a chat about a mild spring day.

"Damn it, Jane, no. The smell does not disturb me. Put out the candle."

Her fingers touch his good hand and she lifts it, aloft, and he shifts closer to her so she can bring his hand to her mouth. She kisses his index fingertip, chastely. "Is it that you would deprive me of sight, as you have been?"

His temper has never been closer to the surface, than it was during his long rehabilitation, during this darkness. He pulls his hand away from her mouth, his brows drawing together, but she maintains her hold and doesn't let him slip his hand out of her grip.

"Put the damn candle out."

She lets out a little sigh and the bed shifts. He doesn't detect that telltale sulphur scent of a recently extinguished candle, and the radiation of heat becomes fainter, but her steps move and he knows she's just moving it across the room, further from him, so that only the outer reaches of its halo touch him. He swings his hand when he hears her returning, and his fingers brush the plane of a similarly cheap length of fabric, warmed by the heat of her body.

"I'm only trying to save you the sight of the ruined shell of the man you married."

Jane captures his hand again, sitting down at his other side, the side where he can still feel the light, somehow, on his skin. "I did not make the same mistake you did, sir," she says, the faintest approbation in her voice. "I married you with perfect knowledge, with every bit of my will. I know you, and you are the man I chose to travel through my life by my side."

His throat is not thick. It isn't. It isn't, he keeps telling himself. "Then you are more the fool."

She puts her hand on his cheek and he frowns, deeply, fighting himself. "You condescended to propose marriage to me," she reminds him, and he can feel her leaning slightly over him. "You thought to dress me in finery and parade me as your prize. And now you, sir, may very well be feeling the same reluctance and mortification I felt, but believe me, you will not be able to hide my pride, my joy at this. Do you remember how often you asked me what I would do, should all society shun you? Now it is your turn to stand by _my_ side, to prove your devotion to me by giving up this battle. You will not win."

He grabs her with his good arm, sliding it snug around her narrow waist. "Can you still look me full in my ruined face and pant such honeyed words in my ear?"

The mattress shifts and he feels something—the tip of her nose—brush his, her breath light against his mouth, and he wants to tilt his face up, to claim her mouth. Then she traces the tip of her nose over his cheek, her lips find his ear, and she kisses his earlobe. His sightless eyes close.

"You dare me to love you," she whispers. "I never stopped, Edward. And I never will."

He lifts that damned husk of an arm, and his mouth twists. He wants to touch her, wants to feel her, with both hands, and he will never be able to do so again. This is his perfect hell.

She moves and he gradually feels her fingertips as they glide up from the rippled scar tissue marking where his hand used to be. Her cool fingers trail up and back down again. "Does this hurt?"

"Not right now." Sometimes he wakes with the unshakable belief that his hand, his arm, is on fire. Sometimes it burns, aches terribly, feels raw and open all over again.

Her long hair brushes his thigh and he can sense that she is pressing those soft lips against that ruined flesh, and the old anger rises, the fear. He has to take a long breath, to bite his lip to keep from ordering her away, and he never found himself beautiful but since the morning he woke to find her gone he has felt a thousand times less than worthy of love, and no one since the fire has touched him with such tenderness.

He's almost shaking when his hand finds her hair, the curve of her skull, and he draws her to him, lifts her until their noses touch. He tilts and her mouth is open before it touches his, hot and wet, and his hand slides down the nape of her neck and she shudders under him.

"For so long I knew, I knew this would never happen for me."

She doesn't ask what he means, but she moves and his bad arm is about her waist and her breath touches his forehead. She's on her knees beside him. "As did I."

Then her mouth touches his, slow, soft. He snags a handful of fabric and yanks and she lets out a low chuckle. "Yes?"

"Take this off. Take it off."

"Were you never taught to say please. Next you will be demanding all sorts of unconscionable things in drunken French." Her little fingers find the hem of his nightdress and tug. "Stand up, sir. Please."

He was never aware of how much he took for granted, before. How he assumed there was no gaping pit at his feet when he swung his legs out from beneath the blankets in the morning. Every step is like a child's first and he is left helpless and angry again.

She skims the gown up and leaves him naked, and when he feels her heat radiating to his skin he finds her sides, then bunches the fabric in his fingers. She lifts her arms obediently despite her ribbing, and he manages to slide it off her one-handed.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Get in bed. Under the covers." He pauses. "But not before you blow out the damn candle."

She doesn't, and he knows she doesn't, but he doesn't care. The bed creaks and he follows her, kneeling.

"Jane."

Her cool hands touch his warm cheeks. He touches her hair, traces the length of her spine, and she shivers again. When he tilts his head forward she meets him halfway, her breath against his lips just before she follows.

There will be a lifetime of this. Of being led, of waiting in the dark in anticipation.

In a spasm of frustration he pushes her down, pins her under him. Her legs are still together; with his knee he nudges them apart.

"Edward." He can't tell if it's a whisper or a plea.

\--

Jane can't count the number of times she dreamt this.

She is fully aware that, had she observed all propriety and decorum and manners before their aborted wedding, she would have been left dreaming of slow kisses and slower caresses.

Instead, even as St. John insisted that she mortify her flesh and follow him to certain hard death, she dreamt of the only man she would ever love, dreamt of his mouth on her neck, his fingers between her thighs, the firm heat of his manhood in her palm. She dreamt of him and woke with the despair of knowing that he would not come back, he would not be back, that if he had ever tried to find her that he hadn't tried hard enough.

And now he is above her and they are naked, and he is hers. Her husband. And she is in a dream, another dream, with his ring on her finger and his eyes blank and staring at anything but her.

"Edward."

Her legs are parted and his hips fit in the valley between. All day he has been drawn tight, on edge, and all she knows is to be light to ease his heaviness, to distract him from that brooding despair. It is her wedding-day.

And though he keeps begging her to put out the candle she can't find it in her to do it. She can't do this quiet and blind in the dark. At least he knows what he's doing.

But she, she will be his eyes for a long, long time, and more than that, she wants to know him, again, the way she did those few nights just before their barely-averted first wedding.

(But she didn't know him. Not fully. Not wholly.)

He leans down, supporting his weight on the elbow of his bad arm, and his hair falls forward to brush his cheeks. She had his hair new-cut for their wedding. And his wide ruined eyes are just above hers.

 _Edward_ , she sighs, silently, a single tear tracing down her cheek. She could have had him, whole, unbowed, all to herself in some sunny Italian villa, all hers and never hers. Now, though.

He drifts the back of his fingers up, over the plane of her belly, over her nipple.

The sensation, the pure delight of it, leaves her panting, her belly tight, her knees tight against his hips. He plucks the bud of puckered flesh and she lets out a sigh that slides up over the roof of her mouth in a slow whimper. He plucks the other and she angles in toward him, and then his hips sink down to hers and he covers her breast with his hand and her lips are already parted and trembling when he kisses her.

Her hands drift down his back, tracing the faint indentations of old scars. He makes a soft noise and his hips rub between hers and she tilts her head back. Her stomach is clenching in anticipation that's almost dread.

The length and breadth of him will kill her. That hard, warm part of him that he's rubbing between her thighs. He will take her maidenhead and—

And he presses his lips against her neck and he draws his tongue up the line of her throat and she shivers under him. She takes a breath and wraps her legs around him, and he groans in answer, deep, vibrating against her chest.

"My love."

She thinks the words and her face burns with a sudden flush before she whispers, "Touch me."

He moves, dipping his tongue between her breasts, finding her left nipple with his mouth, and teases her with feather-light caresses between her thighs. She buries her hands in his hair, making soft encouraging sounds, the weight of his body pinning her down.

He strokes a finger up the slit between her thighs, so lightly, so gently. He strokes a finger up and she holds her breath, and he suckles hard against her right breast and his finger squirms between, up inside her, and she whimpers.

Oh, oh how she has missed this, how she has wanted it, how she has ached and quivered and _desired_ this. The sheer wanton joy of it makes her arch under him, and her legs fall open. He slides another finger in and she gasps out his name, her nails raking down the back of his neck. With the next her hips circle and she can hear how wet she is, the sound his fingers make as they slide in and out of her.

"I want..."

"What," she murmurs, and the pleasure is exquisitely painful.

"I'll never see you again, but I..."

He crushes his mouth to hers in his typical brutal way, taking what he wants, with no regard, but as far as she's concerned, for as long as he makes love to her this way, he can do whatever he likes.

And then he kisses her chin, the slope of each breast, the gleaming white flesh of her belly. She props herself up on her elbows, her hair spilling down her shoulders and brushing her back, as she watches him—

"Oh, _oh_ ," she whimpers, her head lolling back as he gently runs his tongue up the slit between her thighs. He parts her, spreads her wide with the fingers of his good hand, and his tongue touches her where she's slick and ready for him, and her entire body shivers under him. He draws his fingers up and down, parts her again, his thumb, oh, _oh_.

And then he finds that small slick button of flesh, that button of flesh they discovered so many months ago, and she _gasps_ , groping for anything, flushed with shame and desire and pleasure. He rubs his thumb over it and then he flicks it with the tip of his tongue and she sobs, the crown of her head against the pillow, her pale limbs spread wide and her husband's tongue inside her.

"Please," she whimpers.

"Please," he replies, and she is almost glad he can't see her like this, about to beg for this thing she can't speak and can't imagine and can't want, mustn't want, wants more than anything.

"Edward..."

He starts to maneuver into place over her but she stills him with a palm on his hip, and then she grasps his cock, his flesh firm and flushed in her palm. She strokes up and down the shaft, feeling the smooth ponderous weight of him, imagines him filling her, imagines him pinning her down, inside her.

She sits up and faces him, naked, her hair in warm ripples down her back, and kisses his jaw, and he turns his head and his mouth touches hers and she can taste _herself_ on his lips. She kisses the hard curve of his adam's apple, the hollow of his collarbone, each of his nipples in turn. His good hand touches the back of her head and his fingers thread into her hair and she kisses his belly, and then, slow, she pauses.

"Edward," she whispers, and blows on his cock, and it jumps in response.

She closes her eyes and kisses the tip, still cupping the base of his shaft, and his fingers tighten against her scalp. She kisses him all the way down the shaft, and then she flicks her tongue out and slides it all the way up, and he lets out a choked cry and when her tongue flicks over the tip of his cock again, she tastes salt.

"Lie down before I do something terrible." His voice is trembling.

"Now?"

"Yes, damn it, now, you witch-woman."

She obeys him, opening her legs again, for him. Her husband. He settles against her, over her, his hips snug between her thighs again.

"You have to tell me if it's too much to bear. I can't see your face. Although you can clearly see mine, you liar."

She rakes his hair back, away from his brow. "Yes, dear."

And then he guides his cock down and she feels it butt gently against her, as he pushes slowly between her thighs, to where she is slick and tender from his caress. She holds her breath until she has to gasp in another, and then his chest is against hers and he's rocking his hips against hers and oh, he is too deep, he is far too deep, and she is going to break.

"Edward—"

He slows immediately. "Sore?"

She nods. "Oh, it hurts."

He kisses her neck and slows more, but he's going just as deep, and she opens her mouth to cry out—

And she's sore and slick and he's stretching her, he's too thick and too big and—

And then he pulls back and pushes in until he's flush against her, letting out a soft hum of pleasure, and her face is wet, and he is _inside her_.

Her husband.

He thrusts again, again, faster, and then she feels a shudder pass through him, from her hands on his back down to her thighs snug tight around his hips, and he lets out a low rumbling sigh of pleasure. Then he pulls out of her and they're separate again and the pain settles to a low deep throb.

"Now you're mine," he whispers. "Mine."

"I always was," she tells him, cupping his face in her hands. "Always, love."

\--

He wakes when the mattress dips, but he can't feel the heat of sunlight on his face, and the house is quiet around them. He hears steps cross the room, the splash of water in a glass, the slow steps back to the bed. The night is warm still, or maybe it's just the heat of their breath and their joining. He pushes the covers away and stretches in his nightshirt.

The steps stop at the edge of the bed, and he tenses in anticipation of her weight dipping the bed, but instead he hears something soft, falling.

Then his wife slides back into his bed. He's on his side, his bad arm under his pillow, and her slender body had been curled up, her back to his chest. She stretches out again, her hips snug against his again.

And she draws his arm over her again, and his fingertips encounter bare flesh.

His throat tightens.

_Bertha._

Bertha and her blind, terrible rages, her ripe and horrifying sensuality, her tongue by turns sweet and vulgar. Their marriage bed had been a constant struggle until he had given it up. He had been shocked, appalled, disgusted by her wantonness, her knowing desire. And he had looked everywhere, everywhere possible, to find the angel to Bertha's devil, the passionless, the frivolous, or the untouchable. Someone who would understand the terrible loneliness and despair of his marriage, who would soothe him and give him the peace he had been denied. Only to find her.

Jane, his sweet, tender English rose, who would sustain him, who would show him all that was good and pure. Jane, whom he had corrupted in that narrow bed at Thornfield, whom he had tried to make his own.

Jane, who is naked and snug against him. Who arches when he draws his fingers up against her belly. Whose smooth arm slides down the length of his, cupping her hand over his, gently leading him to the join of her thighs.

But Jane isn't Bertha. Jane, his sweet, loving, teasing, inexperienced Jane, who knows only what he has taught her. And he taught her the delight of her body, in an attempt to keep himself from compromising her so entirely.

And he, he feels himself responding, _wanting_ her again. He draws his hand from hers and yanks his nightshirt up, and shifts his naked hips against her bare ass, sighing even as she lets out a soft squeak. He cups her inner thigh and pulls it up, her shoulder bumping against his as she arches, and he dips his fingers between her open thighs.

She sighs out his name and she's still slick, still just as hot and wet as he remembers. He finds his way by touch, digs his thumb against the small button of flesh and she shivers. He fits two fingers inside her still-tight sex and keeps his thumb against her and she, her hips, oh, she grinds against him, panting, letting out soft cries with every thrust of his fingers.

Jane isn't Bertha. Her slender body, slick with sweat, folding and unfolding, writhing against his touch, the scrape of her heel against the sheet, the tight white lines of her nails against his wrist.

Jane.

"Edward," she breathes, and her hips move against his and his groin aches with need for her, to be where his fingers stroke and delight her.

"Jane," he whispers, and dips his head to kiss the point of her jaw, the side of her neck, her hair on his lips, warm and so smooth.

"Don't stop," she whispers, and he can hear the little hitches in her breath.

"I have to." He thrusts his fingers in deep and splays his hand between her legs, forcing her hips back against his, his cock against the cleft of her ass, and she cries out again. "I need you, love."

She has to make two attempts to do it, but she manages to sit up. He reaches for her and she straddles his hips, helping him when he begins to push himself up, and she wraps her arms around his neck, and her nipples brush his chest. Their mouths touch, hers tasting of heat and water, and she does a slow split over him, her knees sliding apart. As soon as he fits his cock just inside her sex he rubs the slick button between her thighs again and she cries out, stifling herself halfway through.

"No, no," he tells her, straining, rocking into her, feeling her tighten around him. "I can't see your face, let me hear it, let me hear what you feel—"

"Edward," she moans, her voice breaking as it rises. "Yes, yes," she burbles, and her tongue flicks over his earlobe, her hips bearing down, his cock sliding deeper between her thighs as she moves, circling as he fondles her. She tosses her head and her hair slides over his crippled arm. "Oh, love, my love, I love you so much, Edward, please, please..."

He has no practice at drawing out the act of lovemaking, especially of late. Part of him was always convinced that the women he took to his bed were fighting their own repugnance of him, to allow him such liberties. But Jane is trembling, sobbing in pleasure so close to pain that it frightens him, and she _sees_ him, and she isn't turning away, isn't demanding that he take her in the dark, under the covers, in her own blindness.

Then her nails rake down his back and her mouth finds his again and he holds her squirming, writhing hips to his, to allow himself a deeper thrust, a more savage thrust. He drives his cock deep and she cries out, tossing her head back, and his mouth finds the column of her throat.

She's clinging to him when he gives up and pushes himself up on his knees, lets her fall onto her back and mounts her, takes her, her knees fallen open, arched up under him. His hand is tired so he uses it to help support his weight as he drives into her again and again, and she meets his thrusts, but her gasps are more harsh, more pained now. And she is so, so wet and tight against his sex.

When he breaks, with a long slow shudder, pinning her under him, her slick inner flesh pulses weakly against him. He pants his breath back and when his fingers drift over her hips, her breath speeds up.

Slowly, curiously, he hooks his pinky inside her, rubbing against her, his cock still sheathed tight between her thighs, and she arches, her hips rising against his, writhing. Her movements are jerky, slow, and she clenches once, again, and lets out a high, breathy cry.

Her release. Her release is exquisite when she falls apart around him, desperate, clinging. He has never felt such a thing, not while joined, not while buried inside a woman. She pants, her hands snaked up under his nightshirt, nails digging into his back, breath hot against his neck.

"Witch-woman," he whispers huskily, and she chuckles, then hisses when he slides his finger away from her, his cock out of her.

"I'm glad," she whispers.

"Of what? The darkness?"

She reaches up and kisses his cheek. "That you kept your word. That tonight... that I was not your wife until tonight."

He kisses her cheek. "I would give anything to see you like this."

"Sweaty, with my hair a mess?" She squirms away from him, the mattress dips, and then her voice is muffled as she pulls her nightshirt back on. "We look as though we have run to London and back, sir."

"Which is just how a new bride should look," he declares, finding the pillow again, blessedly cool. She settles against him, the same way she was before, and though he can sense the dawn, he can also sense that she'll be under him again before it finds them, welcoming, sweet, his passionate little Jane.

"Do you think Mary would much mind bringing our breakfast up here?" she mumbles, her hand over his, low on her belly. He has twice spent himself inside her. He wonders if he will feel her increase, feel the petal-smooth curve of a child's face under his fingers.

"For you, my little one, anything."

She nestles against him, making a soft contented noise.

He could make a heaven here, in this permanent night. With her.

And he had been so close to losing her, to a lonely Indian grave, the marble weight of another man's terrible love.

He buries his face in the smooth curtain of her hair and dreams of seeing her face again.


End file.
